Bleed Like Me
by Iyrsiiea
Summary: People break. People hurt. People ruin themselves in the worst ways. Tucker, Donut, Grif, Simmons, and Sarge are bleeding. SongFic. TRIGGER WARNING!


**Song: "Bleed Like Me" by Garbage**

**Characters: Tucker, Donut, Grif, Simmons, Sarge**

**Genre: Angst**

**Edited as of 8/28 because FanFiction . Net is ********[Redacted]****[Redacted]****[Redacted].**

**Seriously, guys, fics like these tend to harmless. I'm making absolutely no money here. And the inclusion of the lyrics was an intergal part of the pacing. It just feels wrong now. So thanks for that.**

**TRIGGER WARNING!**

Tucker comes into the base after 'patrol'. He glances briefly at the cupboard where the food rations are kept, but forces himself to look away despite his rumbling stomach. He'd finally made it to four days straight, he wasn't about to give in now.

No girl would want him if he was a fat pig.

* * *

Church gives him odd looks sometimes, but he never says anything. Probably because he knows Tucker's on to his little secret as well. He saw the kinds of magazines the freak kept in his room. If Caboose is even capable of noticing, he hasn't mentioned it.

The eyes that are following him when he get up to go to the bathroom after dinner bothers him. Throwing up wasn't a crime, the food they were sent probably had toxic chemicals in it anyways. So what if he didn't want that shit inside him?

They had no business telling him how he should eat. He was just watching his weight, after all. No big deal.

* * *

He stared at his hand. When he moved his fingers he could see the bones inside move. His skin was paper thin and stretched over sharply-protruding knuckles. Visible, tangible progress made him grin. He'd be handsome in no time.

He ignored how dull and ragged his nails had gotten, how dry that thin skin was, how his hands couldn't seem to stop shaking. His smiles didn't show his teeth. He didn't take off his shirt where the others could see. He found ways to make his rations disappear somewhere other than his mouth.

* * *

Tucker had been chubby as a teen. A big fat slob. His older brother had been lean and tall, always chatting it up with some girl. Sometimes he'd hear him with those girls through the thin walls that separated their bedrooms. Tucker asked him how he could have fun with girls like that. His brother had just laughed and said, "No girl would want to be with you, fatty."

The words stayed in his head for years. They got louder and louder and one day Tucker stopped eating.

* * *

Sometimes he starts shaking and can't stop. Sometimes he's so tired he can't get out of bed. Sometimes his stomach hurts so bad he want to rip it out. But he tells himself that it's fine. He's just got a cold or a stomach ache.

He could bear this pain if it meant he wouldn't end up alone.

* * *

Donut double checks the lock on his door before he opens his dresser. From beneath some standard-issue shirts, he pulls out a dress. It's a soft pink, with long sleeves and lace. With care, he takes off his armor and puts the dress on. He ignores how tight it is around his waist and loose around his chest. Looking in the mirror, Donut thinks it fits him perfectly.

* * *

He managed to convince Vic to have the makeup sent in an unmarked box with the regular supply shipment. Previous experience told him that if the rest of Red Team knew what he was getting, they'd make his life hell. Donut carefully extracts the shiny pink lipstick out from under the dresser and begins carefully applying it.

He knew what they thought of him. They were wrong.

* * *

In the mirror, Donut sees a beautiful girl, with skillfully braided blonde hair, long thick eyelashes, big blue eyes ringed with eyeshadow, pouty pink lips and a gorgeous silk dress. The picture was almost perfect, but her eyes are continually drawn to the bulge of her Adam's apple. Maybe she could find a scarf or shawl to cover up her body's betrayal.

And that was what it felt like, a betrayal. She was a girl; she wanted to look like a girl. But she had all the wrong parts.

* * *

She remembered how disturbed the kindergarten teacher had looked when he asked Donut why she'd been in the girls' bathroom and she said she was a girl.

She remembered how when she tried to play with dolls her mother would take them away and give her a fake sword instead.

She remembered how the boys in high school would beat her up and call her a faggot, but she never corrected them because she knew that it would make the beating worse.

* * *

It hurt to feel so wrong in her own skin. It hurt when people hated her for how she identified herself. It hurt to hide an integral part of herself from her own teammates. They seemed to have accepted 'him' being gay but that wasn't the truth, and she didn't know how they'd react if they knew. It was better this way.

She could endure this pain for the moments when she could make her outside look like what she was inside.

* * *

Grif trudges away from the base after Sarge's latest rant, casting casual glances behind him. No one notices him leave. As he reaches his little corner of the canyon, he sits up against the rock and takes off his helmet and arm guards.

A knife comes out of a storage compartment, and he rests the edge against his skin.

* * *

As he drags the blade across his skin he lets out a low moan. Blood wells up from the cut, and the sharp sting of pain sends shudders down his spine. With a steady hand, he digs the knife in a little deeper.

Sarge had yelled at him for nearly ten minutes today, insulting everything about Grif from his weight to his family. And he hadn't said a word. Now he was going to vent out that hurt and anger on his flesh. He was torn up inside, and it was only fair that his body be torn up too.

He pushed down harder, and the shaking that came after was from both pain and relief.

* * *

A few minutes later, he got up and walked back to base. The knife cleaned and stowed away, his armor reattached and hiding the still-throbbing slice on his arm. He felt so much lighter. He even waved at Simmons who was busily cleaning his gun and Donut enjoying his wine and cheese. Sarge called him a dirtbag over his shoulder as he passed, but Grif just focused on the ache of his fresh cut and didn't even feel the verbal slap.

None of them could see the blood still oozing from the long horizontal slash on his arm, but he could still feel it. It was the only thing he could feel.

* * *

Sarge hated him. Hated how fat, lazy, and insubordinate he was. He degraded him every second of every day; if he wasn't too busy trying to kill him. At first Grif fought back, insulting the older man just as much as he did Grif, but eventually he stopped.

Because, truthfully, Grif hated himself just as much if not more than the sergeant did.

* * *

He hated how fat he was. He hated how much of a disappointment to his mother he was. He hated how repulsive to his own 'friends' he was. He was just so damn hollow inside, because there was no point. He kept surviving so his family would get a paycheck, but he wasn't really living. He was numb, feet still moving, mouth still working, but he was only alive when he was hurting.

He could enjoy this pain if it could bring him back from the dead.

* * *

Simmons read over his psychiatrist's email for the third time. He was suggesting a face-to-face vid chat again. He typed out two paragraphs about how he was having fun hanging out with his teammates and everything was fine, but he was too busy for a vid chat. He wrapped the email up with a request for more medication and clicked send.

He really didn't care if the doctor believed his bullshit or not, he just wanted him to keep prescribing him those pills_._

* * *

He'd fought tooth and nail to not end up in therapy before, when his mom started getting concerned about his nervous behavior. But when he learned after some research that if he acted just the right part they'd give him drugs, he was more than happy to appease his worried family.

They didn't need to know why he was so jumpy. No one needed to know. It wasn't their business if Uncle Sean had been a bit too fond of him, the fucker was dead now and Simmons was an adult. Therapy was completely unnecessary.

* * *

Where had that therapist been when he had been holding a loaded pistol to his head? Nowhere. And when he still sometimes pulled out his gun and pressed it to his temple, thinking of removing the memories of that sick bastard touching him permanently, what use was that doctor? None.

He wanted to live, but he couldn't stand feeling his uncle's fingers on him late at night. So he found pills, cold pills, sleeping pills, antidepressants, painkillers, anything that could take his mind off of it for even a moment. Pills were legal, he wasn't breaking the law. And the doctor's recommendations were just that: recommendations.

He wasn't a junkie like those meth-head degenerates. He just needed a little something to get though the day.

* * *

Simmons didn't have a problem. He literally could stop at any time. But the drugs helped him. Mixing different medications was dangerous but he always researched something before he took it. And sometimes the side-effects were a little scary but it wasn't any worse than the memories.

* * *

It didn't matter that he was constantly nauseous. It didn't matter that he hadn't slept in days. It didn't matter that it felt like his heart was going a mile a minute. Every second he didn't think about that asshole was a blessing.

He could withstand this pain if it meant he could be free of the man that had stolen his childhood.

* * *

Sarge watches the occupants of his base with slightly blurry eyes. Simmons is hard at work inspecting their ammunition supply. Donut is painting pink hearts on his rifle as he sways to a song on the radio. Grif is cooking breakfast, the only chore that he willingly does. In his own way, Sarge both hates and loves each and every one of them.

It's oh-six hundred in the morning. He takes a chug of the vodka in his hand that's disguised as water.

* * *

He always keeps alcohol on hand, hidden from sight. There's a flask of bourbon in his armor's storage compartment, a bottle of whiskey stashed in the Warthog and a case of moonshine under his bed. Leadership had its perks; he could have nearly anything shipped if he told Command they needed it.

Sarge barely drinks any water anymore, the only liquid that passes his lips is supposed to get him drunk. He hasn't been fully sober in years, and he wasn't changing that now.

He felt wrong without the alcohol, everything seemed too bright and clear. His brain worked a little better with some grease on the wheels.

* * *

Sarge was old. Too old. His family was all dead, his friends passed on or moved on. He didn't have a wife and no children that he knew of. All that he had was this base and this team. A pointless base in a box canyon and an incompetent, annoying as all hell team. But they were his, and even thought they got on his nerves he still loved them in the depths of his cold, grizzled heart.

* * *

Simmons was a stuck-up, know-it-all, whiny nuisance. He was also loyal, hard working and incredibly smart. Donut was a damned faggot and far too girly, but he was kind to a fault and had a knack for art. Grif was a lazy, useless waste of flesh. Despite that he was probably the most intelligent person in the whole fucking canyon and reminded Sarge a little of himself in his youth.

They were his team, and with them he wasn't so goddamned lonely. They were his everything. But the booze makes him say things he shouldn't have said, and he never treats them with the respect they deserve.

* * *

He knows that Simmons looks up to him and is disappointed every time. He knows that Donut needs support he's not getting and the boy's starting to feel the strain. He knows he's way too harsh on Grif and sometimes his rants hit a nerve. He's not a good leader. But he pretends, because that's the best he can give his surrogate family. The aching loneliness fades when he feels the sting of failure.

He could accept this pain as long as he was needed, even if he wasn't wanted.


End file.
